Chapter 167

Translator: Willia

Ricardt knew what hell looked like. He had also learned there how to become a demon. The Monster Forest reminded him of the demon he had forgotten. Absurdly enough, it came back almost like a hazy, distant memory.

Carrying those sickening, spine-crawling memories with him, Ricardt pressed onward with the others.

The farther they went, the stronger the revolting stench became, and the source of that uncanny sense of wrongness grew steadily clearer.

Before long, they came face-to-face with it.

At first, Ricardt thought some enormous boulder was writhing on the ground. Then he realized it was five or six orcs crouched together, eating something off the forest floor.

Perhaps the best comparison was five or six enormous cattle huddled together grazing. The first things that struck anyone upon seeing an orc were its size and its smell.

The moment one saw them with one's own eyes, fear seeped into the heart. The others had at least seen or killed orcs a few times before, so they fared somewhat better, but Raimund and Roy felt as though their hearts had frozen solid.

Ricardt, on the other hand, lowered himself behind the brush and stared intently at the orcs in the distance.

Then one of the orcs suddenly jerked its head up and began sniffing the air. It was clearly reacting to the scent of humans.

But its nose and mouth were smeared all over with the blood of its prey, so it failed to pinpoint Ricardt's group. It was full as well, and its vigilance had dulled with its satiation. The orc soon lost interest.

Then the orcs began scuffling among themselves as though they meant to kill each other, until one of them flopped onto its back in submission. Soon afterward, the five or six orcs began to move off.

They carried enormous clubs and weapons that were little more than heavy, rusted lumps of iron.

Some wore barely enough to cover their lower bodies, while others had taken all manner of metal objects made by humans, cut and torn them apart, crudely patched them together, and hung the resulting mess over their bodies.

Clank, clank. The sound followed every step, gradually fading into the distance. Ricardt waited until enough time had passed, then approached what the orcs had been eating.

The filthy, gruesome sight made the others retch. None of them had weak stomachs, yet the stench was so vile and the sight so revolting that even they could barely endure it.

Ricardt, however, reached down, grabbed a fistful of the barely recognizable remains, and smeared it all over himself. The others stared at him wide-eyed.

“W-what are you doing?”

“We need to hide our scent.”

Hunters sometimes smeared themselves with an animal's dung and urine while tracking prey. This was much the same.

Ricardt went first, scooping up handfuls of the mixture of flesh, blood, entrails, filth, and saliva and smearing it over himself. The others reluctantly followed suit. The way every one of their faces twisted in disgust was quite a sight.

Oddly enough, though, doing this had an unexpected side effect. Their fear of the orcs diminished somewhat.

At that moment, their desire to escape this filth as soon as possible outweighed even the question of life and death. Fuck slipped out almost involuntarily.

In any case, with their scent disguised, they cautiously began following the direction the orcs had gone.

The creatures were hardly the sort to conceal their presence as they moved, so tracking them was not difficult.

Following their trail eventually brought the group all the way to the orc settlement. The orcs' dwellings were unspeakably filthy, crude, and grotesque.

They basically lived in tents. Stakes had been driven into the ground at random to form a perimeter, everything stood crooked and uneven, and animal bones, heads, and hides had been hung about in a grotesque parody of decoration.

If there was one unusual, or perhaps simply unexpected, feature, it was the presence of something resembling a flag. It looked like nothing more than a piece of cloth blackened with dried blood, with a palm print stamped onto it in white plaster.

“A flag means they have formed a tribe. This is more serious than I had thought.”

Ricardt spoke. Orcs usually formed groups around individual families, so a settlement of this size meant they had subjugated or absorbed other groups and grown their power considerably.

But Count Cheska was in no state to answer. It was not because he was weak. This was simply the natural reaction of an ordinary person.

What am I doing here? Am I really supposed to be here? Thoughts like those had left his mind more or less numb.

And if even the Count was in such a state, there was no need to wonder about the others. Roy stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the sight of the orcs living there.

There was something almost human about it, yet not human at all. At the same time, it seemed too peculiar to belong to mere beasts of nature. Roy was deeply shaken by a feeling of revulsion about as profound as any human being could experience.

Only Ricardt remained focused, watching the orcs with hawk-like intensity, until he spotted one emerging from an unusually large tent.

It was far larger than the other orcs, and one of the two long tusks jutting upward from its mouth had been broken off. Ricardt knew at once. That was him.

The orc had a female by the ankle. It dragged her outside as though hauling a piece of baggage, and it was impossible to tell whether she was alive or dead.

Broken Fang flung the female aside. The other male orcs immediately swarmed over her. They began striking and grappling with one another in a wild frenzy.

Eventually, they tore her body apart. Then, whatever they meant to do with them, each orc took a piece of the dismembered body and wandered off in a different direction.

The sight was so horrifying that the others froze where they stood. Ricardt, however, continued to judge the situation with a cool head even then. The orcs were excited and distracted. This was the perfect moment to launch a surprise attack.

But nothing in the world was ever that easy. Orcs were hardly the only things that lived in the Monster Forest. The nearby brush suddenly rustled, and a spider the size of a baby sprang out and attacked one of Count Cheska's escort knights.

“Aaagh!”

Startled, Ricardt drew his sword like lightning and cut down the man-eating spider. But they had already been discovered. Every orc in the settlement turned its head and stared directly toward them.

At first, they merely looked. Then madness quickly began to gleam in their eyes. Ricardt made his judgment in an instant. The plan was already ruined.

“Run!”

Ricardt slapped the cheeks of his stunned companions and yanked them sharply by the backs of their necks to snap them out of it. Startled back to their senses, the others bolted without so much as looking behind them.

They had brought nets, spears, harpoons, and all sorts of equipment to bring down a single orc, but now those things were nothing more than cumbersome burdens that snagged on twigs and brush. They threw everything away and ran.

RROOOOOOOAAAAARGH!

The orcs' roars sounded behind them. Then the ground itself began to pound beneath their feet as the orc warriors charged after them.

People driven into a situation like this tended to lose their heads. One of Count Cheska's escort knights broke away from the group's route and fled toward the County of Cheska.

“Don't go that way!”

Ricardt, who had deliberately been running at the very rear, shouted urgently. If the knight did that, he would end up leading the orcs straight toward the territory.

But whether by misfortune or good fortune, an orc's hand axe came flying from afar and struck the fleeing knight squarely in the back.

Whir-whir-whir-whir! Thud!

The axe had been thrown with such incredible force that the knight's spine shattered instantly and his entire body was hurled through the air.

The orcs then practically tumbled over one another as they pounced on the dead knight. They grabbed hold of him and pulled against one another, fighting over who would get to eat him, and simply tore the body apart. Within moments, there was barely anything recognizable left.

Ricardt raced straight for the hideout.

After running for nearly an hour, they finally reached it. Ricardt himself was still in relatively good condition, but everyone else was utterly exhausted, gasping raggedly for breath.

“Raise your weapons!”

Ricardt shouted. Fight now? The very idea of fighting seemed insane, and trying to do so when they had been pushed to the absolute limit of exhaustion hardly seemed realistic.

But what else could they do? Sit there and die? Ricardt grabbed them one after another by the backs of their necks and forced them upright.

Just then, one of the pursuing orcs fell into the trap and plunged into the ground. Only half its body sank in, but because of the speed at which it had been running, its chin slammed hard into the ground.

The orcs charging behind it tripped over the first one and crashed down one after another, shaking the earth with every impact. Ricardt did not miss the opportunity. His sword flashed like lightning, golden flames seeming to trace constellations through the air.

Light flashed several times, and the fallen orcs died before they could even scream. But that was not the end of it.

An enormous orc came thundering toward Ricardt and rammed him with its entire body. The others saw it happen and thought Ricardt was finished.

“Master!”

Roy cried out desperately. But what should have happened did not happen. Ricardt should naturally have been knocked to the ground, pinned beneath the orc, and crushed. None of that occurred.

It was as though he had stopped a charging bull with his bare body. The ground had merely been gouged into long furrows beneath him. Ricardt himself did not budge as he withstood the orc's charge.

Still locked against the orc, Ricardt grabbed one of its tusks, wrenched it free, and drove it straight into the orc's eye. Not once, but several times.

Thunk! Thunk! THUNK!

The massive body seemed to struggle as though it meant to resist, then convulsed and collapsed. Ricardt swiftly snatched his fallen sword back up from the ground.

Roy, Raimund, Count Cheska, and the one surviving escort knight all stared at Ricardt. They saw him from behind. He stood tall, facing the orcs head-on. The same thought came naturally to all of them. How could a human being possibly do that?

The pursuing orcs, meanwhile, found themselves looking into the unwavering eyes of a human. Eyes that seemed to burn fiercely beneath the hair falling over his forehead.

At Ricardt's feet lay an orc that had been killed by its own tusk, while nearby sprawled several more orc corpses that had fallen into the trap and been slaughtered in an instant.

The orcs did not become afraid at the sight. They possessed none of the human desire to compete and triumph. Victory and defeat meant nothing to them. There was only slaughter.

Yet whatever they were thinking now, they could not bring themselves to approach Ricardt recklessly.

Then suddenly, their leader appeared from behind them. Broken Fang punched the heads of the subordinates blocking his path, knocking them aside as he forced his way through.

Whether human or orc, the leader of a group inevitably possessed a certain presence, a bearing that distinguished him from the rest. Broken Fang's gait was slow, heavy, and unhurried.

The hideous brute stepped forward wearing an absurdly heavy, crudely made helmet and suit of armor. His head alone was nearly the size of Ricardt's torso, and he drooled as he growled, as though struggling to contain a rage boiling up inside him.

In his hands was an enormous, blunt double-bladed axe. Whether its edges were sharp hardly mattered. Whatever it struck would simply be crushed and torn apart.

Broken Fang stared at Ricardt for a long moment, then opened his mouth as wide as though he meant to swallow him whole and unleashed a tremendous roar.

“RROOOOOOOAAAAARGH!”

Even from some distance away, the force of it sent a gust of air all the way to Ricardt. But Ricardt roared back.

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Did orcs have a language? Even if they did, there was no reason to think the two of them could understand one another. Yet in that moment, the meaning came across perfectly. You and I. We settle this to the end. The loser would become prey, and the winner would become the predator. That was the one and only logic orcs understood.

Astonishingly, the other orcs backed away. Naturally, only Broken Fang and Ricardt remained facing one another.

The others watched the entire scene from behind. They could not believe it. What in the world was happening? The shock was beyond words. They could not comprehend how such a thing was possible, or how it could actually be happening before their eyes.

A duel between a human and an orc was something none of them had ever heard of, much less seen. And a duel between a human and an orc had no need for technique. Nor did it have any need for courage. Only strength and death would decide the outcome.

Broken Fang raised his double-bladed axe, its haft nearly as tall as a man, high above his head. He poured all his strength into arms impossibly thick with muscle. Compared to that weapon, Ricardt's sword looked like nothing more than a chopstick.

“RROOOOOARGH!”

Broken Fang roared and brought the axe down as though to split Ricardt in two. Ricardt did not evade. He met it head-on.

CLANG!

A sharp metallic crash rang out. The enormous double-bladed axe snapped and fell to the ground, and Broken Fang no longer had a head. His headless body simply remained standing.

A moment later, an enormous fountain of blood burst upward from the severed neck.

The severed head lay at Ricardt's feet. Then the blood spraying high into the air came raining down over him.

The one standing there with his legs planted wide and the burning sword in his hand was not an orc, but a man.

The massive headless body slowly tilted and crashed to the ground with a thud. At that moment, it became perfectly clear which of them was prey and which was predator. The orcs accepted that fact and retreated.

Silence settled over the forest. Ricardt stood still for a moment, then turned back toward the others.

“I believe this should suffice as proof, Count Cheska.”

“......”

Count Cheska trembled and found himself unable to say a word. What could he possibly say? For some reason, it no longer seemed fitting for Ricardt to be speaking human words.

A question rose in the Count's mind. Did this prove that Ricardt had been chosen by God, or did it prove that he was a monster rather than a human?

Chapter 34 – Proof. End.

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